STRANGE ENCHANTMENT ''THROUGH tranced hours the meadowsweet with summer-burdened plumes Had lulled the day to drowsiness—only the bee presumes To ripple through the stillness, as yonder dragonfly Will kiss the pool to dimples, then zoom toward the sky. In quiet mid-stream a lily fleet, new-launched by summer glee, Now slept becalmed beneath the boughs of one lone alder tree ; While like the youth Narcissus the brooklime on the marge Peered, blue-eyed, in the mirror framed by water-lily targe. From further bank rose willowherb and iris torch aglow — And spearmint, where the waterhen plied softly to and fro : Till these, with mazy motion

HEART FAILED AND THINKING NUMBED THE last blue wisp of earthsky Is overpast,, And every thwarting tie. Away is cast. Trackless and unplumbed The dazzling way ; Heart failed and thinking numbed At spring of Day Far wider than the heart's conceiving,— Richer than the thought's receiving,— Too lustrous-hued for prayer's believing,— Outsoaring scope of Timeshaft's cleaving,— More calm than Death, the tumult-reiving. January 6, 1937. Page-253

A COPPICS OF FIELD MAPLE AND SPANISH CHESTNUT SHAFTS of light pour trough the small young leaves Of Spanish Chestnut with long twisted grooves In every plinth ; a mire way trod by hooves Of kine meanders ; a gang from the hive bereaves Green-yellow maple flowers of sweet drops And of their fine loot worthy dust. Beyond Are slumbering fields that dream of autumn crops, And a willow-bordered newt-rife pond. March 18, 1938. Page-311

MID-VOYAGE ONE by one the earth-lights fail And the shores sink down, behind : The prow leaps on with a freshening gale Over the course assigned. I strain my eyes but cannot see The lofty coasts ahead, But still behold waves' sapphire glee And the sky with ocean wed, And lily-white foam on blue sea foil And the sail by breezes bent.... And sunsets like volcanoes boil, And the star host pitch their tent. Now anger stirs the up risen moon, For she argently strikes the waves And lures the prow with a silver tune To sky-rim goals or graves. March 23, 1936. Page-175

THE FARTHER SIDE OF MIRAGE TIME is a wilderness and Fancy sets Her mirage, far or near, to mock our dreams. Behold the desert marge the mind forgets, The waving fronds of palm, the gliding streams. The scented air, un canopied by cloud, Is thick with unimaginable themes. A groundswell paves the silence ; this the loud Wingbeats of Splendour trouble with golden gleams. Page-258

EVER THE AMPLER DREAM-DAY NEWLY woken day Build the un broken light, Sweep far far away Sullenness of night. Tumult of gold descending, Thou diapason bright, All our Darkness rending With melody of Sight. Ever the ampler Dream-day Spreading calm wings of flight Wafted through widening gleam-way On the peaks of the world will alight. March 6, 1936. Page-164

THE DIVINE SHAKTI COSMIC, TRANSCENDENT, INDIVIDUAL. SEND Thy pure cadences, O Mother Divine, To echo inly through the caves Of a deepening heart which knows itself for Thine. Play Thy moon-music on the quiet waves Of an ocean's wideness in the still soul, Where tidal waters wait Thy hushed control. Unsullied wisdom of gold which was thrice refined, Shine in the clear space of holy noon On all the upland hollows of the mind : May every shadow-harbouring thought be strewn With solar vastness and compelled To feel all fear and all self-limits quelled. Men have found Thee in wildness and the sharp-tanged ai

THAT FOUNTAIN-SONG OF REDNESS HALF HIDDEN IN REPOSE WHEN the grey dusk has laid upon our eyes Not so much weight as lingers in swan's-down That drifts before the faintest whim of air, And the flittering bat- on a noiseless errand plies, And in the grass the glow-worm lights a Lilliput town, O with what pale white gesture her left hand smooths her hair. But half the stars have gained their wonted place In the high windless vaulture of the sky, Nor hath the night bedewed the crimson rose, Heavy with passionate odour, fain of her face That leans in the dim and the dark hour over the hue less cry

ILLUMINATION SPHERED immensity of red That holds emblazoned in its heart of peace The black upjutting line of western hill. Hills of tranquillity steeped in the setting sun ; Ground transmuted in that drench of gold : A hallowed air whose substance is of light And calm and wideness and release of soul. For now the blossom opens from the bud : Surely the seed of the sun has sprouted from the tomb, That all traditionary clods are lit with knowing ? April 14, 1938. Page-318

A WATER-LILY THIS water-lily, like a moon, Slowly came to full A focussed light, a colour swoon. Remote, inerrable. Leaving water, wed with air, Becrowned with pearls of dew- Nothing misshapen wanders there, No evil pierces through. Ere din of sacrilege pluck sway, Or empery of Night, The dreamlike petals every way Muster their quiet light. October 5, 1936. Page-207